I'm so sorry everyone that this has taken so long for me to post. My internet is driving me to new levels of hatred and drinking. I can't get anything to load until about 1 in the morning, and then it only works sporadically. I'll keep you posted, but it doesn't look to be getting better any time soon. Mac and Sara, I apologize if I'm not getting to respond to your stories in anything resembling a timely manner. I'll head for the library when the time comes to post (so I can actually PM the readers) but as I have said, its thirty miles to town from where I live

I've been going over this for the last three days, and I'm not sure that I'm happy with everything, so let me know what you think.

xoxo, alex

Chapter Twenty-Two:

Ministry of War, Coruscant

?Minister Calrissian, there is a holocomm from Admiral Pellaeon waiting on line one.? The smooth voice of his Twi?lek secretary snapped his attention back from the holo he?d been staring at. It had been taken just around the time peace had been finalized with the Empire: Han and Leia and their children, Luke and a very pregnant looking Mara, Wedge and Iella Antilles, Corran and Mirax Horn, and him. The party had been given aboard Booster Terrik?s Errant Venture, celebrating the end to the war they had been fighting for most of their lives, and as a promise to the future they saw in their children.

It had been a war to end war; noble in intent, but impossible a dream to make reality. ?Patch him through, my dear.?

She giggled, making him suddenly remember that as good a secretary as she was, she could easily have been his own child. Relief wasn?t the image he wanted to convey when the admiral?s worn visage shimmered into resolution on the screen. Since Senator Shesh?s power grab and Fey?lya?s counterattack, it was hard to even whisper dissension in the galactic capitol. Fey?lya?s popularity rating was higher than it had been since the start of the war, and polls on all the holonetworks indicated that the public was letting the fear he cultivated bend them from their last strands of common sense. In one, eighty-seven percent of those polled had said they supported using a ?Death Star? type weapon against the Charon, even at the cost of one of their own worlds. The fact was made all the more terrifying when Lando knew that such weapons would soon exist once more, and with such a mandate, the Bothan would not hesitate to use them.

?Minister, you look worried? Even after Fondor?? Pellaeon, chuckled. Lando knew it was his sabacc face, a distraction.

?We lost the shipyards, and the Charon converted half the planet?s population during their occupation, not to mention the ones that joined the Peace Brigade.?

?And the star destroyers.? Pellaeon reminded him. The new ships under construction at Fondor had been Imperial-class ships, fitted with gravity well generators. Only Mon Mothma had been delivered to the fleet before Fondor?s loss.

?Bail Organa, Jaina Solo, and Garm Bel Iblis were all lost.? It burned his throat to think of his best friend?s daughter as a casualty of war. A hero, she?d been honored for her sacrifice with a brand new ship named in her memory. Now the ship was gone too.

Pellaeon nodded gravely. ?And what of Chief Fey?lya?s fleet??

?My sources say its almost ready to sail. At least one of the Eclipse-class ships and an escort of Darksabers.? Somehow, Talon Karrde had managed to keep him informed of the fleet?s progress, despite the exclusion zone around the shipyards.

?Admiral Ackbar and I have been discussing this at length,? Pellaeon trailed off, sighing. ?We don?t trust Fey?lya with that kind of firepower.?

Lando knew his office had been swept for eavesdropping devices in the last hour, but he activated the scrambler Karrde had given him weeks ago before he spoke. ?I don?t either. Most of the senior commanders back us. Fey?lya?s never been popular with command, but we all remember what that kind of powe

Wow, this is a lot of reading. It sounds great so far, but I'd like to read it one or two more times before I make a definitive reply. This is a really massive post and it is clear you've worked extremely hard on it.

I'll get to replying as soon as I can so you can post. Hopefully Monday, perhaps Tuesday or Wednesday, my replies will be up.

Hope your internet stops screwing with you so things can get back to normal.

Well I wanted to say some good news guys. I've been working very hard for Arbor Productions, an RPG company, on their re-launch. I've written two settings for them in Halt Evil Doer! for Mutants and Masterminds and Winterweir which will be released under True20, Savage Worlds, and Pathfinder (D&D 3.75) in the course of the coming year.

It's nice to get back into writing even if its going to be spin-off work.

Darth Ahrimane surveyed the vast number of screens that displayed the progress of the war that he was waging against the whole of mortal creation. In truth, it was fairly obvious that Darth Arcane's plans were going to fail and fail soon. This was not unexpected. Darth Arcane had been placed in charge solely as a means of continuing the progress of the war while the new Warp Portal was created to the Old Universe.

The New Republic, battered and bruised as it was, had no idea that the desperate conflict that they were waging against Arcane and his forces was only a tiny amount of the total forces in the posssession of the Charon. They had moved but the tips of the fingers of the vast hordes that were available to the ancient True Sith.

"Something is amiss, I can feel it in my bones....." Darth Ahrimane could not help but feel that there was something WRONG with the current situation. Victory seemed to be certain once the Warp Gate was opened and his new forces moved out. Darth Arcane and Darth Artemis had exhausted the Republic's resources and spirit. Against the full force of his armada, they would be swept away and civilization in this galaxy would end.

Yet, he knew that he was missing some indefinable quality that threatened the whole of his immortal existence.

"Darth Ahrimane, I come to face you...." A voice intruded on the inner sanctum of the Greatest of All Evils. It was naked, raw, INDIVIDUAL, and the tone was one that bespoke of the kind of inner strength that had long since faded away from the ranks of Otherspace's slaves.

The gigantic spidery like creature turned to face the figure that was before him.

"Skywalker," Ahrimane's voice was a matter of fact tone but even he could not understand how he had missed the presence of the Chosen One's heir. The blazing light of the Force's Other Side was an intrusion against the eternal darkness he had shrouded this dimension with. With all the power of the Charon, he could not eclipse the light but Skywalker's brilliance did not obliterate th darkness either.

Luke Skywalker was dressed in the plain brown robes of a Jedi Knight but his hands held a sparkling green saber that glowed brilliantly. "Your era of evil is over."

Ahrimane's answer was simple. "Die."

The blast of pure evil energy was not too similiar to Palpatine's force lightning. Instead, it was like shadows that moved with unimaginable speed towards Luke's form. There, it struck against a globe of light that surrounded Luke. Ahrimane sucked the life from a million Charon warriors to increase the energy that he hoped would snuff the Chosen One from this cosmos.

Likewise, Luke drew from the strength of all living things in Otherspace. Whereas the Charon that Ahrimane called forth the strength of, withered and died, the ones who joined their will to Luke managed to glow ever brighter with the Light.

"Huh huh huh....." The Jedi Master panted in baited breath. Luke's form was soaked in sweat as that moment was singularly the greatest exertion of the Force in the history of the Jedi Order. Ahrimane wondered if the humble master knew that he'd, in that moment, proven himself greater than any Master that had ever come before or probably would after.

"You cannot destroy me, Skywalker...." Ahrimane realized that the Jedi Master was not even here. "Even if you were to attack me, I would come back to life. My essence is encoded into the D.N.A. of every Charon Warrior and I would be reborn within moments. Your former Emperor is nothing to me."

Luke Skywalker shook his head and said "You are fighting a pointless war, Ahrimane. Even if you slaughter all beings in the cosmos, you'll create just a parody of civilization. The Charon are a race of parasites. They cannot create, love, or give life. When the Dark Side has no Light Side to consume, it will devour and destroy itself."

Darth Ahrimane wondered how Luke Skywalker had mastered the Sith technique of Doppleganger projection and yet transformed it toward

Mathew personally hated being the one to break the bad news. Malinza was already looking at him like he was the biggest liar in the galaxy crossed with the man who told her that the Grand Wuzzumn didn't exist nor actually brought good children presents on Life Day. Nevertheless, he wasn't going to lie about the fact that a Jedi had gone rogue. Jaina Solo wasn't the first Jedi to do so nor would she be the last. Power was an irresistible temptation to some and he just hoped that she found the fires of the Nine Corellian Hells as hot as the turbolasers that burned her victims.

Don't lose your cool here. You've seen what the Charon can do to people. Blaming her for being broken and turned into one of their monsters is just stupid, Mathew mentally berated himself over this. It was hard not to be angry at the Sith, though.

Malinza said "You're lying."

Mathew rolled his eyes and said "Fine. It was a clone. It was a clone brainwashed to believe it was Jaina Solo. She's actually fine somewhere and you'll all meet together after the war and live happily ever."

Malinza then slapped Mathew. She was on the verge of tears. "Damn you!"

Mathew sighed and said "I'm sorry. I really am. But there's no use lying about what I saw."

Malinza's stomach churned as she looked. "Not Jaina."

Despite the icy killing-machine reputation that Mathew had, something that he got in part because he was a Stormtrooper AND partially Chiss, he was not a man who failed to understand emotions. He had a daughter back in the Unknown Regions. The Rangers theoretically kept all of their families safe during times of war but he had no way of knowing whether she was alive or dead given the genocide that had been conducted across a hundred thousand worlds.

I'd want to know if my girl is alive. Jessa is my everything but I couldn't stand hoping in vain, Mathew blamed the Mandalorian in him. To be honest, at times like this, he wondered whether he wasn't making a mistake fighting in the war. He'd managed to kill a ridiculous amount of Charon, probably more than ten million given he was responsible for Artemis' flagship being destroyed, but that seemed to be a drop in the bucket compared to their ranks. Plus, there was no guarantee that they could be stopped. A part of him felt he should be with his daughter and making sure that she felt safe and loved in a time of uncertainty.

Malinza took a deep breath and said "Zekk wouldn't have wanted you to tell me this. He'd want to protect Jaina's memory."

Mathew nodded and said "I could tell that he loved her. You could see it in his eyes. He seems like a nice guy. I'll understand if he wants to try and beat me up."

Malinza looked at Mathew, finding that difficult to believe. Mathew was probably close to seven feet tall in his armor and at least two meters in height without his armor. He didn't seem to be ugly like most Stormtroopers but he certainly looked like he could break someone like Zekk in half.

"I find that hard to believe," Malinza observed.

Mathew gave a wry smile. "I've seen Jedi fight before. The only one that looked more deadly was Kyle Katarn and you can tell that he was his mentor. He'll probably go down as a legendary hero of this war. You can always tell the legends."

That was an ironic saying from his father, Clan Ordo had taught him that Anakin Skywalker's greatness had been immediately obvious to anyone who looked at him.

Malinza stared down at the ground. "Don't share this with anyone else, please. Put it in your Ranger reports if you have to but don't mention this to anyone. I won't tell Zekk that I know and it'll be our secret. We're going to need someone like you ahead."

Mathew said "I was only supposed to help them. In the end, I don't even know if this group is going to continue on."

Malinza looked at Mathew square in the eyes. "It has to. Zekk has nothing left anymore."

***

Jedi Council Chambers

Corran Horn was officially ready to just start strangling Masu since the damn Evar

I don't see a problem with Saba being with the Centerpoint group, but our Dathomiri friend should be mentioned too, like Jon said.

Also, I did give Mathew's daughter a name (Karina) in my post. If that was a overstepping/mistake on my part, it can be corrected. If I missed her name in an earlier post, I'm sorry. I had envisioned Malinza and Zekk having a big fight about Jaina, but if she's going to play it cool, maybe it will be his guilt that brings it all out in the open, not her anger- I where this might be going.

It was good to have an Ahrimane scene too, and its a good way for Luke to realize that he needs to come back. Great fight between the two of them too- a good reminder of the power that both of them wield.

We received this PM in our box (sent the 22nd) from one of our readers. I thought I would post it here as most of us would not see the message otherwise. I've never read any of their stuff, but if someone has the chance, it might be nice to offer a little encouragement if we can. Of course, I seem to only be able to get on here at 3 in the morning.

~alex

Hello there,

i've actually sent this aksing you for abit of help, i've actually been laying out and writing a bit on a possible third enstallment for the third KOTOR. It's only in basic stages but i've actually worked out a pretty defined storyline and charaters so far, i was jsut wondering if you had any interest in the games and comics etc if you think my storyline and writing style can be successful. thanks sdfhs.